wordwallah

Using an apostrophe in a word generally indicates that one or more letters have been left out, e.g. it’s, you’re and didn’t.

‘It’s’ is a contraction of ‘it is’ or ‘it has’. However, the possessive of it is its, with no apostrophe. Examples: ‘It’s a great project’ but ‘the film reached its climax’.

‘You’re’ is a contraction of ‘you are’. The possessive is your. Examples: ‘You’re the boss’, ‘Your food is in the oven’.

Dangling participles can cause confusion. A participle should describe the grammatical subject of a sentence, e.g.: ‘While driving my car, I witnessed an accident.’

With a dangling participle, we describe something other than the grammatical subject, e.g.: ‘While driving my car, my 10-year-old played his Nintendo DS’.

Grammatically, the participle driving must relate to my 10-year-old, so we have a 10-year-old who is driving illegally and playing a Nintendo DS! So it’s always best to construct sentences in a way that is unambiguous.

Words ending in ‘ever’ have a completely different meaning if the ‘ever’ is separated:

“How ever am I going to meet that deadline?”

“What ever will they think of next?”

“When ever will they get here?”

“Where ever did she put the keys?”

“Who ever would have thought this could happen?”